The Crazy Quilt of Life

By Margaret Ann Parker

The Crazy Quilt of Life goes back in time to chronicle life on the prairie as Lida Beaty-Jackson shares her vivid memories and experiences in her diary. She shares the pain and struggles of the journey west to a new home and new opportunities. Her unique and diverse neighbors are active players in a strong midwestern community. The charm and joy of their holiday celebrations in the late 1800s is set against the backdrop of the dangers of living on the prairie.

This memoir provides a unique opportunity to experience life in the late 1880s through Lida Beaty-Jacksons personal writing. It offers an honest view of life in those days and allows us to appreciate how far our society has come in the last one hundred years in terms of technology and comfort. Lidas diary shows how much more difficult it was to eat, rest, stay healthy, and be safe from the elements in her time. They were able to find joy in the little thingsthings that we in the present so often overlook. The Crazy Quilt of Life also includes intriguing ancestral information about Lida and her familythe real lives of real people.

The quilt pictured on the cover was sewn together by the author herself, Lida Beaty-Jackson, her mother, and her sister Minnie Elizabeth. The quilt remains in the care of Margaret Ann Parker today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspiring Voices
• Release date: Dec 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9781462404551

Margaret Ann Parker

Eliza (Lida) Ann Beaty was born in 1881 and grew up in a three-room sod house on the prairies of Kansas. Later in her adult life, she was married to the governor of Indiana. Lida was a teacher and an author of Christian literature.

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Copyright © 2012, 2014 Margaret Ann Parker

Co-editor: Jordan Brown

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4624-0456-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0455-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012923343

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 01/20/2014

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CONTENTS

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Introduction

The Beginning of a Journey

Building the Soddy

Neighbors on the Prairie

The School Debate

An Early American Classroom

Christmastime

Family Life

Independence Day

The Stories of Sam and Mart

A Land of Extremes

Storms and Fire

Hard Times Call for Harder Work

Home Remedies

Beauty from the Dirt

Old Cleopatra and Cheap Jim

Time for a Change

Jetmore

Osawatomie

High School

Graduation and Pike’s Peak

The Most Exciting News

Soap, Spice, and Missionaries

Herbert Pearce

Larned

On to Washington

A Farewell

Epilogue

*Extra Stories about Lida Ann’s Ancestors*

Samuel Alley

Preface

Cyrus and Charity Nelson

The Benediction of Samuel Alley

For Lida and all of the colorful ancestors that have been stitched together to create the remarkable quilt that is our family.

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Lida and her father, David

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.

—Psalm 139:14

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INTRODUCTION

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E ach person in a family tree is like a beautifully woven piece of fabric. Every miraculous life connects over time to become a unique and sometimes crazy quilt. At first, only two or three pieces are cut out. But as the next generation is born, new patterns, new colors, and new textures are sewn onto the original pieces, adding to it and making it more magnificent. And knowing about the quilt of a family tree has the power to keep the whole family warm.

Families are timelines that reach far back into history. Ancestors pass on wonderful gifts and talents down the line. To know the history of our ancestors is truly a blessing, and it has the power to strengthen one’s faith in God.

The author of this diary, Lida Beaty-Jackson, was extremely fortunate to know so much about her brave and colorful relatives. And now her personal account of life and some of those stories are being passed on to you.

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THE BEGINNING OF A JOURNEY

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Lida, her mother, and her sister Minnie Elizabeth.

I am not certain when Grandfather Alley moved with his family from Decatur County to Tipton County Indiana, about a hundred miles to the north, or why, but I am fairly sure it was to secure bounty land in return for his army service. They settled near the village of Sharpsville. Mother was in her teens. There, at age nineteen, she met and married my father, David Ephraim Beaty. (He never went farther than the E. when writing his middle name.) They were married on January 7, 1875. Father was just past twenty-two.

Kansas was a magical word in the 1880s. It had a magnetic power that drew people from nearly every state east of the Mississippi River. Not just the young men but the middle-aged and old as well. Leaving behind the home grounds, which their fathers and grandfathers had wrested from the wilderness, making it safe and pleasant to live in such places, entire families turned their faces toward the vast, alluring, and untried West. It was a mass movement, and such migrations have a strange power. There is a hurry to get ready. Goods are quickly turned into cash—usually at a value much less than the goods are worth—and those precious possessions that are too heavy to take are left with relatives. On the day of departure, there are quick and tearful good-byes. The ones leaving say, We’re off.

Off to what? To many people, the dream proved to be a deceptive mirage. To the others who stuck it out, it was a journey of hardship and loneliness—one defeat after another in their conflict with the weather until at last victory, in some form, was achieved. If the victory was not directly for them, it was for their children, who would live and adjust to the new environment.

In September 1882, my father set forth with my mother, my sister Elizabeth, and myself. I was only ten months old. We halted in Linn County, just across the Missouri boundary into Kansas. Here, my father rented rich land along the Big Sugar Creek and went to work. During the first year there, aunts and uncles and their families followed us, along with Grandmother and Grandfather Alley. They all found it pleasant there, with good land to farm, good fishing, and good neighbors. But the winds of the rolling, treeless plains farther west kept up their siren songs, and my father became restless; he wanted to continue on.

On March 22, 1884, my dear little grandmother, Eliza Pumphrey Alley, went to her last rest at only fifty-two years of age. They buried her at Wesley Chapel near the village of Wallstreet. Her grave is marked, and someday I hope to visit it.

There had been a very strong bond between my grandmother and my mother. So now that Grandmother was gone, Mother gave more heed to my father’s insistence that we move farther west. Accordingly, in the fall of 1884, Father and Mother climbed to the spring seat of the heavily loaded covered wagon and again took the westward trail. Mother, who was leaving her family, the grave of her mother and was expecting a new baby before many weeks, was desolate. However, my father had the vigor and vision of a young man; he was thrilled and confident of a bright future. By nature he was the very soul of cheerfulness and optimism; he continued to be until the end of his long life. He was a keen observer, alert on both political and economic matters, and with his great humor, he was able to make many friends, both young and old. He always made time to chat with anyone. Mother was different, though. Modest and retiring, she made fewer friends. But when she made them, they would be sincere ones. As the horses pulled the wagon westward, Father was excited for the opportunity ahead. But Mother was leaving all of her world behind.

Father planned to go two hundred miles west to the town of Stafford, where we would remain for the winter. Then, with the return of spring, we would go another hundred miles where we would stake a claim. Stafford is the first place that I can remember. I was three years old that November, and there are four things that I can recall quite clearly from that time: the odor of a red-lined overshoe; seeing a crock full of pressed meat; fearing that Sophia Crawford would cut off my ears if I marked on the wall anymore; and the most unusual memory—seeing my father, with his neck wound about with a variegated yarn scarf that mother had knitted him, hauling in loads of yellow corn to be used as fuel! If you don’t believe this last one, hunt up your histories and read of the strange doings of the 1880s. It is odd that I should recall these things and not remember the coming of my little baby brother, Joseph Edwin. He was born on January 19, 1885.

In March, Father left us to take his claim and build the sod house, returning sometime in April to take us to our new home. I remember clearly that ride in the covered wagon, the nights around the campfire, the loss of little Dora, our spotted terrier, and the big fight Tige, our mastiff, had with another dog. He came out victorious as always, but wearing the wounds of battle. A slivered ear and a gashed cheek meant nothing to his young life! Dear old Tige—what a friend he was to be in the days beyond us.

Sometimes as we jogged along, Elizabeth and I would sit on the seat with Father when Mother wished to lie back on the bed and rest. As I write, I wonder what she thought about at those times. Through the canvas stretched tightly over the hickory bows, the bright Kansas sunlight would filter in, creating a restful, mellow glow. She would hear the soft thud of the horse’s hooves on the moist ground, the leathery squeak of the harness as they tugged up a rise, and the loose rattle of it as they went trotting down. I like to think she was going over again the things that Father had told her of the new home: that it was as fine a piece of land as there was in western Kansas, and that she would like the cozy sod house with its wide, deep windows for her geraniums. I would like to think that she was sharing some of the hope and anticipation that bubbled over from Father’s songs as he entertained us children along the way. Father could sing, and oh, did he know the old ballads! He could sing many of the old English ones that were as long as your arm and had that peculiar dismal wail to them. Throughout all of my young life on the prairies, his songs were a joy to me.

About noon on the fourth day, we reached Jetmore, the county seat of Hodgeman County. Father bought provisions and talked longer than Mother thought he should to his new acquaintances about the previous trip. With only eighteen more miles to cover, Father thought that we’d be home in time to set up the stove, get the carpet down, and get the beds set up for a good night’s sleep. We passed through Hodgeman Center, which not long before had fought Jetmore for the title of county seat. A schoolhouse, a store or two, and a few dwellings were left to tell the tale. Another few miles and we came to Laurel, which was to be our post office. The office was in Ben Cline’s home. There was Lora, just my age, Cora, Elizabeth’s age, and red-cheeked Ted. Father thought that we should stop and get acquainted with them, but Mother urged him on. In a mile or so, we came to the Glathearts, dear folks that we would come to know so well later on.

As we neared the crest of the hill beyond and approached the house from which we would view our own, we children were filled with excitement, crowding up against Father and Mother, that we might get the first glimpse of our new homeland.

Another moment and Father cried, There she is! He waved his arm proudly at the valley below. But something was wrong. In a few minutes, we were close enough to see what had happened. Heartsick and dismayed, we viewed the ruins of our home. Some thief had stolen the center ridgepole that had supported the roof, along with the windows and doors and the frames of each; every scrap of wood about the place was gone. Roofless, the house stood there like a skeleton. Mother was too stunned to even utter a word, and the tears began to flow.

Let’s go back to Linn County, Elizabeth said. Father began to berate in extra strong language against the man who had spoiled this dream of his. Sorely perplexed, his eyes gazed across the wide view of treeless land and rested upon a galloping rider coming from the right.

It’s Joe Cookun, he said.

Joe Cookun was a bachelor who had taken a claim and lived in a dugout half a mile northeast. He had helped Father build the soddy. He had been watching it for us and had meant to be there to help us unload, but just the day before he had discovered the tragedy and now hurried to tell us to drive on over to his house and make ourselves at home.

Why, Dave and I can throw up another in no time, Joe said in an encouraging manner. He would allow no objections to his proposal and rode along at Father’s side, uttering cusswords to the scoundrel who would do such a thing. Joe had tried to trace the tracks of the thief, but the trail was soon lost as it joined the road to Ravenna, another boomtown fifteen miles to the west.

Good old Joe gave us the sort